Healthy Baby Girl Born After Rare Abdominal Pregnancy

Below:

Next story in Science

A pregnant woman with a stomach ache turned out to have a serious
pregnancy complication that was missed during her previous
ultrasound exams: The woman's 32-week-old fetus was growing
within her abdomen, outside her uterus, according to a new report
of her case.

When doctors examined the woman further and discovered the
abdominal pregnancy, they quickly operated on the woman's abdomen
and found her live
fetus floating in her abdominal cavity, without its
nourishing amniotic sac. The healthy baby girl was delivered and
sent home with her 22-year-old mother in good condition,
researchers in Tanzania said.

Abdominal pregnancies are rare, and when they do happen, they can
go unnoticed even if ultrasounds are used, because the pregnancy
can appear normal in an ultrasound examination, the researchers
wrote in the report,
published Feb. 25 in the journal BioMed Central. An abdominal
pregnancy that goes unnoticed can threaten the mother's life and
cause massive bleeding. [ 14 Oddest Medical Case Reports ]

"I've seen maybe four or five abdominal pregnancies over the
course of 25 years," said Dr. Jill Rabin, chief of ambulatory
care, obstetrics and gynecology at Long Island Jewish Medical
Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., who wasn't involved with the case.

"Many times, these pregnancies are not diagnosed until the
labor," Rabin said. "The woman is going through labor, the cervix
is dilated and you are wondering, 'Why is the patient having
contractions and nothing is happening?'"

Abdominal pregnancy is a rare form of
ectopic pregnancy, occurring in about 1 out of every 10,000
pregnancies, according to some estimates. In an abdominal
pregnancy, an embryo usually first implants in one of the
fallopian tubes (instead of the uterus), and then moves backward
within the body, toward the ovaries. From there, it implants for
the second time — this time, in the abdomen.

Diagnosing an abdominal pregnancy is difficult, Rabin said. "It's
very rare, but you have to keep it in your mind when examining a
pregnant woman who has abdominal pain."

Other symptoms include painful fetal movements, and
gastrointestinal problems. Also, if it's too easy to feel the
baby, or see it with an
ultrasound, that might be a sign that the baby is outside the
uterus, Rabin said.

If doctors find that a fetus is growing outside the uterus, they
make an incision in the pregnant woman's abdomen, to deliver the
baby. The placenta is
often left to be absorbed by the body, because removing the
placenta can cause severe bleeding. "The patient has to be
followed very, very closely to be sure that the placenta is
reabsorbed; it takes a couple of months," Rabin said.

Most of the babies that Rabin has seen in abdominal pregnancies
were healthy, she told Live Science.

"The placenta is attached to something vascular, so the baby is
getting fed from the mother's blood supply, just not in the way
that we would like, so many of these babies are very small,"
Rabin said.

If an abdominal pregnancy is detected in the first trimester,
doctors usually remove the embryo. However, most cases are not
diagnosed until later on in the pregnancy. "If it's diagnosed in
the second trimester, you watch the mother very carefully, but
every case is different," Rabin said.